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Comment by michaeldunworth | Hacker News Reader

I know what you mean, but I think I've got to disagree. The general sense of "Autopilot" implies the same level of sophistication that other vehicles have that use "Autopilot"... Boats use it for mid course, as do planes, now having cars using it. It won't park, and it's not going to get out the carpark and onto the road, but it'll take over once the course is set and there's less technicalities on direction.

I think it's a fair call using this term.

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There's a mismatch between the way professionals and the public use the term 'autopilot'. Pilots know it's an aid, not a turn-key solution. The public misses that important detail. Since Tesla must understand this effect, I resent them using this a marketing term since they can exploit the misunderstanding while not being technically wrong.

By the way, I'm pretty sure completely autonomous parallel parking is already available retail.

> The public misses that important detail.

I bet if I asked ten people in my office right now, less than half would say confidently that airplane autopilot is a turnkey solution.

So you're comfortable with "less than half" of tesla drivers leaving their autopilot on for everything?

"Less than half" is way too much.

If you can get more than 50% of people to understand what your thing does just from the name I'd say that pretty good, actually. Literally no one is turning on Tesla's auto pilot with no information on how it works beyond the name.

Not many people would literally declare "I confidently believe that airplane autopilot is a turnkey solution". But perhaps the point is that a lot of people would vaguely feel that way without exactly crystallizing it as a thought. And those vague feelings would be what the branding is seen to be playing off.

But are your coworkers representative of the general public?

I fall into this trap so many times. You know in your logical brain that what you see isn't a good enough sample for any kind of statistical significance but at the same time you keep seeing things that every other part of your brain reckons is significant.

Like I see Belgian drivers driving terribly every day and I'm pretty certain that they're much worse than British and German drivers in every way. But the only statistical thing I can go back to is the number of deaths [1], which could include other aspects rather than just stupid driving.

My brain wants to shout out that their's clearly a problem, but that 'clearly' is only on the stretch of road I see. It could be that Belgian drivers are really good everywhere else in Belgium.

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

> By the way, I'm pretty sure completely autonomous parallel parking is already available retail.

it is. Tesla was also beta-testing (last I saw a few months ago anyway) completely autonomous head-in/rear-in parking including finding the spot in a crowded parking lot.

>>Since Tesla must understand this effect, I resent them using this a marketing term since they can exploit the misunderstanding while not being technically wrong.

I resent that you're accusing Tesla of intentionally misleading the public on what the feature does.

The car issues very obvious and repetitive warnings to the driver to explain the shortcomings of the technology and what the driver has to do to compensate. If the driver fails to act in accordance with the warnings, the car turns off the feature.

I mean, I dunno. To me, it looks as if Tesla has already gone above and beyond to communicate accurately, and the main reason they're pushing things even further is because of the intense media scrutiny on Tesla accidents (which the incumbent manufacturers probably love).

> I resent that you're accusing Tesla of intentionally misleading the public on what the feature does.

Whether or not they intend to mislead, in practice the name is misleading, and I think it is a mistake they could easily fix.

For example 'copilot': a competent, capable partner, but the ultimate responsibility still rests with the pilot.

I can't agree more. For a company that is expected to understand the science behind the control systems they develop, they absolutely do not get a free pass on what would historically be called "human factors".

They are both fully aware of the importance of the human awareness implications not expecting continuous input from the human driver and choosing to encourage it.

Humans fundamentally can't stay attentive when their attention has no reactive feedback loop and they're only using the "stay attentive" (even though we know that it's essentially impossible at a psychological level) argument to shield themselves from legal liability.

It's both fair play because they knew in advance (and have since proven) that they can beat the odds against a human driver, and have simultaneously built in their legal defense to mitigate their downside. "We told you to pay attention. Your death is not on our hands."

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